Chapter 4: Chapter Four

The village was mostly empty as we entered, farm workers having left to attend to their crops. A few folks were cleaning up the lunch area, and they watched us for a moment as we walked past toward the main road. 

I guess they don’t get too many travelers through here, I thought. 

As if she was reading my thoughts, Red put a hand on my back to keep me moving. 

“Don’t stop. They’ll return to their business once they see we’re passing through,” my wife whispered. 

So that’s what we did. We passed through. My shrine was on the opposite side of town from where we entered. 

As we walked between small single-family houses, most with a simple drapery to cover their entrance in lieu of a door, I picked up on scattered odors of the village. 

Small bits of cold chicken leftover from lunch, a few birds running around the homes of the families that kept them. Men and women attended to various chores, one mending a net that smelled of fish, another hanging wet clothes on a line behind their home. 

Two shirtless children in black shoes ran from around a corner and nearly collided with Red. They stared at us for a minute before their father came out of the home to utter a quick apology and shuffle them to a side yard. Their dad looked to be in his 40s with an unruly beard. I noticed he also chose to forego a shirt, not that it was hot out. He smelled like root vegetables, a little musty and damp. 

I don’t know what I expected from a shrine dedicated to me, a slain goddess gone for two centuries, but what we found was beyond quaint. 

My shrine consisted of a wooden box with chipped paintings of stick-figure wolves running around the whole thing. The box was maybe two or three times bigger than the average lunchbox kids took to school. A tattered gray cloth covered the bottom of the shrine, and a broken candle that hadn’t been lit in a very long time was all that remained inside. 

The grass around my shrine was dead and brown with a few small twigs scattered about the place.

My heartbeat slows, and I walk over to the box sighing. Something occurs to me at once, which causes me to lower my face and exhale slowly. 

“I died. And when I passed on, so too did their faith in me,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure it was loud enough for Red to hear. 

A solitary tear formed and grew heavy on my weariness before making the downward journey. I may not have the bulk of my memories, but for the first time since being reincarnated, I’m faced with the concept of belief and conviction. 

This box was meager, but it probably represented what the village could offer a goddess like myself. And in the end, it’s little more than a physical place to focus one’s faith. 

Here it stood, a pitiable memory of a goddess nobody recalled, one who left their prayers unanswered and shuffled off into oblivion. 

When I catch a glimpse of Red’s face, I see she’s also upset, but for a different reason. 

“It’s gone,” she said. “I saw it here not two months ago.” 

I raised an eyebrow. 

“What are you talking about?” 

Red looked from the shrine and then back to me. She pointed to the box as I shrugged, clueless. My wife clenched her fists and hissed, “The sigil! It’s gone.” 

Horror chased the sorrow from my heart as ice spread through my veins in about two seconds. The naked feeling continued to grow, but it was strongest in my left arm. That’s where I found my right hand reaching until it once more met the empty skin where my sigil should be. 

Who would steal my sigil? Red told me it’d been here since I died in the grotto. Why let such an artifact remain untouched for centuries, only to strip it from my altar now? It just didn’t make any sense. 

“Sh—should we ask the town if they know where it went?” I asked, having trouble forming words because I was shaking. My brain could come up with logical ways for this to play out and maybe a solution or two for us to work through. But it would be competing against my subconscious which was filling with despair faster than a leaking ship took in seawater. 

“There’s no need for that,” a woman’s voice spoke up behind us. We both turned to find someone had snuck up on us in our panic. Red reached for her hand axe at her side. In the blink of an eye, she had it free and pointed at a woman who appeared to be in her early 20s but was obviously not human at all. 

Her hair was a deep red, and she had a pair of pointy ears on top like I did, though hers were smaller, white on the front and black on the back. Her nose twitched, and that’s when I spotted several thin black whiskers beneath her dark tiny nose. The woman’s eyes were amber, and like myself, she carried a set of claws at the tips of her fingers and a bushy tail behind her. Of course, hers was mostly red like her hair with a white tip at the end. 

The stranger wore a simple brown dress and carried a stringed instrument slung behind her back, some kind of lute. A thin white rope was tied around her waist. 

At the sight of Red’s axe, she showed us her palms. 

“Easy now, Jenny Red. No need to bring out the huntsman over a simple misplacing,” the woman said. “I can show you where the sigil has been relocated.” 

My wife did not like this. She sneered. 

“And I suppose you can show us where it is because you’re the one who did the relocating. Is that it?” she asked. 

The woman didn’t grin as I expected her to. Instead, she lowered her voice a hair. 

“Look, you can certainly ask if I stole the sigil. But then I can start asking troubling questions as well. Why the sudden interest in a sigil belonging to a slain goddess? It’s not like you can use it, Jenny,” the woman said. 

To this, my wife had no response. So I figured I’d ask a question to satisfy my curiosity. Maybe we could reframe the conversation a bit. 

“Uh. . . Red? Are people that look like me fairly common in Gyrrelle?” I asked, turning away from the newcomer. 

Without taking her eyes off the woman in front of us, my wife raised an eyebrow. 

“What are you talking about?” she asked. 

I cleared my throat and pointed at the only other redhead on this road. 

“Well, aside from me and this stranger, everyone else in the village appears to be human. I was wondering how common people like us are,” I asked, pointing back and forth at myself and the stranger. 

Now Red did look at me, but her expression suggested I might have a screw loose. With an eyebrow raised high enough to need air traffic control, the huntsman said, “Honey, this woman looks nothing like you. From her blonde hair to her fancy clothes, you could not be any different.” 

I squinted at a loss for words. But the stranger found our visual disagreement amusing. 

“There’s a curious thing,” she said, locking eyes with me. “Ordinary people shouldn’t be able to see through my illusion.” 

Red gripped her axe all the tighter. 

“Let’s play a little game I like to call ‘coincidence.’ It’s fairly simple. I speak a series of sentences, facts really, that seem suspicious. And I keep going until your secrets are revealed, and the coincidence evolves into reality because that’s all that remains once your hidden truths are made known.” 

Neither I nor Red spoke a word. I didn’t have the slightest clue what was happening. 

“The other day, every wolf in this forest let forth a unified howl that carried for miles. Jenny Red the Huntsman, former wife of Ruka the Wolf Goddess, shows up in town with a cloaked stranger in tow. The couple is actively searching for Ruka’s sigil, previously hidden in this very location. Jenny’s mysterious companion was unaffected by the illusion I so carefully wove together with my magic,” the woman said. 

With each sentence she laid before us, the tension in the air grew thicker until it became so dense I could cut it with a butter knife and spread it on a bagel. 

Still, we held our silence. The game was over. We had only to see what the stranger would do with our secret. 

“The facts would seem to indicate Jenny’s mysterious companion, who she referred to as ‘honey,’ and saw through my disguise is none other than Ruka the Wolf Goddess. And just like that, the game of coincidence is over,” she said. “But I am not some mannerless delinquent. If I know your names, I will share mine in return. I am Pyra the Bard, a traveling musician, and storyteller.” 

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I decided to speak first. 

“Okay, Pyra. You win. I am Ruka the Wolf Goddess, and I’m here for my sigil. Will you please take us to it?”

Grimacing and looking around to make sure nobody was paying attention to us, Red slowly put her axe back on her belt. 

“A slain goddess returning to reclaim what was hers. Now that’s a story I’d love to learn and then put to music. But, to answer your question, yes, I will reunite you with your sigil in exchange for two small favors.” 

Red slapped her face with her hand and groaned. 

“We don’t have time for this shit, Pyra. If you know who Ruka is, then you know who killed her. And you probably also know what he’ll do once he realizes she’s back. I doubt he’ll want to play a game of coincidence,” my wife said. 

The smile faded from Pyra’s face. 

“I understand how important your sigil is to you. To sweeten the pot, I’ll offer you a small tidbit about myself. My mother is Tamylla the Fox Goddess. I’ve seen and felt the magic that runs through her sigil, the outline of a fox leaping into a pile of leaves. Trust me when I say I know how foundational that mark of divinity is for her identity. And also trust me when I say the favors I’m asking for are equally important to me,” the bard said. 

Now that she mentioned it, Pyra was the spitting image of a humanistic fox. She was shorter than me, and her canines weren’t nearly as pronounced. My breasts were larger than hers, and on the whole, I seemed to have more heft to my body. Pyra was leaner than me. 

Growing up in the orphanage, my best friend was a boy named Louis. Nice kid, but he had the worst jokes. If he was comparing me to Pyra right now, he’d say I was a bit more husky, slap his knee, and take off with that nasal laugh of his. 

Exchanging a glance with Red, I sighed and motioned for her to continue. It seemed like she was being sincere, and it wasn’t as though the Bear God called the village of Decarth his home. . . . I hoped. 

“The first favor will be the more challenging of the two. I want you to save this village. The second favor is more straightforward. I want you to take adopt me into your pack and give me your protection.” 

Red and I spoke at the same time asking different questions. 

“Save the village from what?” I’d asked. 

“What do you need protection from?” she’d asked. 

Grinning, Pyra pointed to Red. 

“I’ll answer your question first since it’s easier,” the bard said. “As Ruka has made clear, I’m a demigod. My father was some no-name mortal who somehow caught the eye of my mother and spend the night with her. As a whole, we demigods aren’t that powerful. Our magic is much more limited than that of our parents. But magic is magic, and some people are all too happy to hunt us down, kill us, and use our blood to siphon what little power they can from it.” 

Holy shit. That’s fucked up, I thought. And the expression on my face must have matched because Pyra’s face softened. She gave a slight nod as if to confirm my thoughts. 

Those same kids from earlier went running by, screaming, playing with sticks as though they were swords, off questing on their adventure. Who knows? Maybe they were seeking pieces of their own lost hearts. 

“Now as for your question, Ruka, the village is going to starve this winter if you don’t help them now,” she said. “Most folks here don’t realize it, but their entire heathar crop is fucked. A fast-spreading fungus took root among the plants, and they didn’t catch it in time. When harvest time comes in a few weeks, they’ll realize the village’s only source of income is dead. That’s their food and the money they’ll need to buy new heathar seeds for next year.” 

Red crossed her arms and cocked her head at an angle. 

“How do you know this?” she asked. 

With her whiskers twitching, Pyra’s voice softened, and she looked down at the ground before speaking. 

“I got jumped by some bandits nearby a week ago. When they realized I didn’t have any money, they destroyed my instrument, beat me senselessly, and left me for dead. I would have ended up in the same place you did, Ruka, if the leader of this village hadn’t found me and brought me here.” 

Pyra took a moment to collect herself before continuing. And I could tell by the sound of her heart and the tightening of her throat the bard was being sincere. 

“She’s a good woman that Daphne. Not only did she nurse me back to health, but Daphne also gave me this instrument that belonged to her late husband to replace my own. I owe Decarth a debt. She and maybe two other people know the crop is wasted. Daphne is panicking, desperate for a solution to save her home. So I’m begging you, Ruka the Wolf Goddess. Save this village, please. And I’ll give you back your sigil.” 

Spitting on the ground and popping her back, Red sighed. 

“Shit, Pyra. Neither of those things is small a favor. Just one of them alone—”

I cut her off. 

“I’ll do it.” 

While my wife stared at me in disbelief, a murder of crows flew by overhead, cawing something fierce. When silence returned to the area, I spoke again. 

“But I need my sigil first. Without it, I’m powerless to offer you protection or this village any form of salvation.” 

“Give me your word,” Pyra said. 

“You have it,” I said. 

Red was still stammering over the pace of this exchange. I knew my wife had things she wanted to say, but things were just happening too fast for her to jump in and say them. I’d apologize for that later and offer a few kisses as a token of my sincerity. 

Slowly reaching behind her into a little pack tied to her rope, Pyra’s claws seemed to clutch something. 

She then offered me what appeared to be an outline made from some paper-thin metal that’d been scorched black. It fit neatly into the palm of her hand. 

The outline was that of a wolf howling, head upward to what I assumed was a limitless sky. I nearly sobbed when I saw it, my mark of divinity. This was it. It pulsed in my presence, and my heart cried out for an immediate reunion. No, not just my heart, something more, a primal force within me craving for an end to its nakedness. My magic buzzed inside me, a proverbial hornet's nest that’d been kicked two or three times. 

With blinding speed, I snatched the marking from Pyra’s grasp, and the moment it made contact with my fingers, a flash of silvery light illuminated the space around me. My hair started to lift as the wind swirled around us in a whirling storm of energy. 

No instruction book to guide me, I did what felt natural. That is, I slammed the sigil into the underside of my arm. It burned like the first few seconds of a hot shower when I’d been outside all day walking around Boston during the winter. My skin cried out for relief, and smoke rose from the glowing mark on my arm. 

At once, I felt my magic kick like an electric fence. Someone was hitting me with a defibrillator, but nobody was shouting “clear!” as they did on the medical dramas Sister Marianne liked to watch on weeknights. 

Suddenly I understood. My magic was a living thing. It moved with every heartbeat and coursed through my body with every blood cell. Once more, it was mine, and I could feel it. By the gods, I could feel it! 

I wanted to run up and down the road screaming, “How did I live before this?” A goddess reborn without the ability to feel even a hint of her magic was a cruel thing. But now I held it in my very hands. I wasn’t as powerful as I once was, but dammit, this was a start. 

Only when the wind died, did I realize I’d been screaming. Red had her hands on my cheeks, trying to call my attention back to her. Apparently, my eyes had rolled into the back of my head, not that I realized any of this until she told me. 

Thank the gods Pyra’s magic created the illusion of an empty road, or our cover would have been blown to high heavens. 

When I finally caught my breath, I raised my head and met the demigod’s amber eyes. 

“You have your protection, Pyra the Bard,” I said. “Now let’s get to work saving the village.” 

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